With fewer chances to go out and play basketball because of the current pandemic, it’s hard to develop and maintain your basketball skills. It’s especially hard to stay in shape at home when you have your bed nearby and the TV to binge-watch your favorite shows. Don’t worry because we got you covered on how to stay in shape for basketball during Covid-19.

Kellen Petrone, Recruiting Coordinator and Assistant Coach for Pitt Women's Volleyball, offers approach to skills training and dives into the X's and O's of college volleyball. He takes us on the recruiting trail and provides tips for aspiring volleyball players.

Sports are beginning to make a comeback this year. Teams are forming and coaches are back to guiding and preparing players for games. Many coaches put in seven to eight hours a week as a coach, on top of having full-time jobs. Their dedication is uncanny. Preparing to say “thank you” to a coach, especially during these tough times in 2020, makes all the difference. 

Lacrosse Coach and pro player Martin Bowes joins the Hustle With Us podcast to talk all things lacrosse. Martin touches on every aspect of his athletic past, his coaching future, and the future of lacrosse itself. He dives deep into skills development drills and explains how youth players can use nutrition to improve their game. Martin comments on the ever-changing landscape of lacrosse and what sticks out to him the most from a recruiting standpoint. Finally, he talks sports technology and how he uses it to help all his clients, especially when he can't be there in person.

In the not so distant past, it was hard for players to learn these skills on their own. Expert coaches were few and far between, and for personal training, access to those experts was expensive. Thanks to the Google Play and App Stores, it’s never been easier to develop that expertise. We put together a list of some of the best apps out there for baseball training.

If you are a basketball player who wants to be the best on the floor no matter what level you play at, you have to understand that there is more to the game than simply scoring. To be considered the best player on the court, you've got to be proficient in these sever other areas as well.

Anytime a youth player takes to the baseball diamond, coaches should stress to them the importance of fundamental defense. Players should be mentally preparing as they take the field by asking themselves questions like: What does a proper defensive stance look like? How do I prepare before the pitcher throws a pitch? Where am I going with the ball if it is hit to me? While baseball is a thinking man's game, playing sound defensive baseball is all about movement. Staying in an athletic stance, keeping your knees bent and balancing on the balls of your feet go a long way toward placing players a position where they can succeed. The following drills for improving your defensive technique are from Sean Holiday and the team at Triple Crown Training.

Wall ball is the ideal way to practice basic lacrosse techniques such as shooting, passing and catching all while working in cradling. Wall ball allows you to get in tons of repetitions without depending on a partner. As a youth lacrosse player just starting out, playing wall ball is the number one way to quickly improve your stick skills. These are the best wall ball drills for youth lacrosse players.

Perhaps the most important skill in any successful lacrosse player's bag is stick work. Mastering control of the ball and stick with each hand is essential to advancing to the next level of competition, whether that's high school lacrosse, collegiate or professional. Building confidence in your ability to stickhandle will trickle down to nearly every aspect of your offensive game. Your ability to cradle, switch hands and deliver accurate passes with either hand will make you an unstoppable offensive force.

Denver Nuggets' Head Strength Coach Felipe Eichenberger joins the HustleWithUs podcast to talk about how players like Nikola Jokic workout during the off-season and how he keeps them sharp during the 82-game regular season. Coach Eichenberger's pulls back the curtain on the Nuggets training procedures and how the players put in work off the court to maintain their peak athletic shape.

Whether you’re a pitcher preparing for an outing where you'll throw up to 75 or 80 pitches or an outfielder who might only see one or two fly balls head your way, it's critical to warm up your arm before taking the field. Injuries happen when your muscles aren’t ready to exert themselves. Warm-up throws should gradually work up to the same types of movement patterns that you’ll use when pitching or playing in the field. Warm-ups shouldn’t make you fatigued; don’t start by throwing fast pitches at a long distance. The following progression from Sean Holiday and the team at Triple Crown Training walks you through a three-step progression for warming up your arm before practices and games.

Wall ball is the ideal way to practice basic lacrosse techniques such as shooting, passing and catching all while working in cradling. Wall ball allows you to get in tons of repetitions without depending on a partner. As a youth lacrosse player just starting out, playing wall ball is the number one way to quickly improve your stick skills. These are the best wall ball drills for youth lacrosse players.

For many soccer players and coaches, the “beautiful game” has become a pursuit that spans across all seasons. When weather permits (and even when weather doesn’t cooperate), players have more opportunities to work on their game than ever before. Because of this, there’s no better time than now to sharpen your skills as a player or coach, and there are a lot of great resources in the app store today to help you achieve your soccer training goals.

Bodyweight training doesn’t require a dedicated gym and uses minimal equipment, so you can fit in a workout whenever you have some spare time, wherever you are (like your living room). When we think of upper body exercises, we think pullups, bench presses and shoulder raises, but there are so many more moves to build muscle. In fact, there’s a whole host of arm moves that require no equipment. By virtue of their supportive nature, bodyweight moves tend to activate the abdominal and lower back muscles. This is a win-win when primarily targeting your upper body and back. To increase the intensity of bodyweight exercises, you can increase the number of repetitions or change the movement to make it offer more resistance, such as elevating the feet during a push-up.

Improve your handles and get quicker hands with our "Tennis Ball Handles" program presented by The Scoring Factory. The simple tennis ball is a wonderful and inexpensive tool to stimulate professional level handles.

The way you move with the ball on the lacrosse field is integral to your playmaking ability. If you can get past a defender and make room for yourself to execute an accurate pass or get a clear shot off, it could be the difference between an empty possession and a momentum-swaying goal. One way to gain space and room from opposing defenders is by dodging. Dodging combines athleticism, stick work and footwork. Dodging is not about making preconceived moves but, instead, “reading” the defense and adjusting in order to gain an advantage. An offensive player’s job on the field is to go to goal; this means traveling north and south on the field. Defensive players want to push the offense off course, in an east-west direction, which forces them away from goal.Just like a killer crossover in basketball, a lacrosse dodge can make defenders miss and open up all sorts of offensive options. But before players can be ready to roll out with three and four-move combos, it's important for them to master these five fundamental dodges.

There are plenty of ways to get your sweat on right from your living room—no equipment (or very little equipment) needed. Your body provides you with everything you need to get an efficient, effective workout. Bodyweight workouts are becoming increasingly necessary due to social distancing and quarantine. They’re great because they teach you how to control your body with balance and proper form.

When you first start playing lacrosse, you may be exclusively taught to use the overhand shot when aiming for the net. But as your skills improve and your competition becomes better, there will be times that the overhand shot just won’t cut it. So, having additional shots in your repertoire becomes a necessity if you want to stand out as an offensive weapon.

Coach Nate Blazevich of Blaze Sports Performance joins the podcast to talk us through some at-home workouts you can do while you're practicing safe social distancing and cooped up in your house on quarantine.

Tips for strengthening your pitching motion from Coach Sean Taunt, who is an Associate Head Coach for the Pacific Lutheran University baseball team and the Director of Pitching for the Big League Edge performance development organization. Coach Taunt dives into how BLE first started over 15 years ago and what went in to building it into the national presence it is today. He gives us the history on their trademark piece of equipment, the VPX Baseball Harness. Using the harness, he tells us all about how feeling, rather than seeing, has really raised his players' skills to another level. Coach Taunt gives us some drills and circuits to improve your game and outlines how BLE sets itself apart from the competition.

Mike Falsetti is a former professional catcher and currently runs Catchers Capital (www.catcherscapital.com) where he helps young athletes develop their receiving, blocking, and throwing skills to be able to play catcher at the next level like he did. Hailing from the Windy City, Mike joins to guys to talk about his story and his journey to starting up Catchers Capital. He gets very technical when talking about his training regimens and his favorite drills and progressions that he likes to go through with his clients. You'll want to get out the pen and paper to take notes as Mike dives deep into arguably the most important position on the baseball diamond.

If you find yourself stuck inside your house for a couple weeks, why not use the time to your advantage and improve your basketball skills? The truth is you don't need a practice partner or anything more than a basketball and a little bit of space to improve your dribbling and handle. The following workout, brought to you in collaboration with The Scoring Factory, provides you with 26 different drills to hone your ball handling skills. You don't need a gym or a wide open space; at most you'll need a driveway, a hallway or a stretch of sidewalk. You can even do most of these drills inside your bedroom.

Professional basketball player Terrell Stoglin joins the Hustle crew to talk about his professional career and his unique training plan. After playing at the top tier of college basketball, Terrell went on to play overseas in a few different countries. Ever since high school, Terrell has hit the gym every day and hit 500 shots. Not "attempted", he has to MAKE 500 shots before he leaves the gym. He tells us how that practice has helped him succeed on the hardwood. He walks us through his journey, breaks down some distinctions between the leagues he has played in, and gives some tips to the younger athletes out there hoping to go pro one day too.

Coach Steve Dagostino of Dags Basketball joins the podcast to walk us through his training philosophy and how he really hones in on improving his client's shot and basketball IQ. Despite his size, Coach Dags was a 2-time Division Two All-American and played professionally for 6 years. He brings a wealth of knowledge to his clients and to this episode. He talks to us about his experiences and how he eventually grew that knowledge into his own training academy where he works with younger clients all the way up to NBA athletes. He also tells us about some of his favorite drills and why you need to constantly be getting reps in if you want to be the best in any sport you play.

Hannah Huesman is a Mental Skills Coach with the Philadelphia Phillies organization. She joins the guys to talk about her expertise and why mental health is just as important as physical health when it comes to training. She walks us through her experiences, some success stories, and some drills you can try at home to better your mental health. Hannah dives into not just how mental skills training can help your game, but also how it can help you perform in everyday life.

Coach and Trainer Jordan Lawley joins us to talk about his experience growing his business and how he got to where he is today. Jordan trains all sorts of clients, including NBA players and celebrities, and even tells us some stories of who he's coaching for the upcoming NBA All Star Celebrity Game during All-Star Weekend. He takes us down memory lane and his experience breaking records at UC-San Diego then going on to play professionally overseas. He fills us in on some of his favorite training drills and what most younger players lack before even coming to see him.

NBA Skills Coach Reid Ouse has quickly become one of the top skill development coaches in the United States. In the past year alone Reid has worked with over 45 NBA & overseas players, as well as numerous College All-Americans and Top 100 High School prospects. He walks us through the intricacies of his specialty, footwork, and offers some drills that he likes to use to help his own clients improve their first step.

Here are five things you can do to reach your potential as a basketball player. Work hard enough and you’re guaranteed to have a better chance at making it through this year’s tryouts.

Rebounding is one of the most important skills in the game because it helps reduce the number of offensive opportunities that your opponent will get over the course of the game.

Here at Hustle, we focus on building the best basketball app out there, but we also want to help you make good decisions with the products you buy. That’s why we created this list to help you teach your kid to love basketball.

With the holidays right around the corner, it’s never too late to pick up the perfect gift for that special basketball fan in your life. From relatives, friends and teammates to coaches, or even coworkers, basketball themed gifts are fun and easy to give. Basketball season is in full swing, so there’s no more timely gift out there. So check out some of our favorite basketball themed gifts this year.

Nobody saw him coming. Oklahoma’s Trae Young had almost no buzz prior to the start of the 2017-2018 NCAA basketball season, but since delivering multiple 40-plus point games with an incredible shooting percentage, everyone is singing his praises. The star point guard is leading the nation in points per game and assists per game, while getting comparisons to Steph Curry for his shooting prowess and quick release. He’s also carrying his team to one of their best seasons in recent memory.

The mid-range jumper definitely takes a lot of work and the right mindset. But having this shot in your arsenal can make you a lot more versatile, it’s an easy way to get yourself shots, and it’s a lot more efficient than you may think

Focus is one of the few elements that can make or break any athlete. Your players’ abilities to think through their possibilities in fluid real-time and act on them physically without making a wrong move are going to come down to their focus, discipline, and practice time, no doubt. Practicing and drilling technique like this is the only surefire way to avoid those wrong moves, as correcting those is just as important as improving the right ones.

Training Tips from Professional Basketball Player Nick Novak

Fox Chapel high school basketball coach and statistician, Gabe Skrinjar, explains the importance of incorporating objective performance measurements into practice and game day routines.

One of the toughest parts of being a coach is finding the right drills for your kids. This is a mix of a drill that is easy to learn, easy to practice, and can be carried back onto the court at game time.

When it comes to being a better coach and coaching your team to be better players, there are a lot of different approaches you can take. There are clinics, or in-personal learning. There are online learning opportunities, both formal and informal. There are books and manuals on the subject. There are YouTube videos. And then there are apps.